CHINA: Leading Chinese civil rights defenders are staging a hunger strike to show support for a fellow democracy activist who they say was attacked by government-hired thugs at the weekend.
Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who has represented members of the underground Christian church and Falun Gong practitioners, said he hoped the protest fast would become a nationwide campaign to support persecuted activists.
"Recently a number of Chinese citizens have been beaten up by government hooligans acting like Triad [ mafia] gangs," he said by telephone from his home province of Shaanxi. "In response to this we're staging a hunger strike, as we've no better method of helping the Chinese people."
Mr Gao himself survived what he said was an assassination attempt last month when someone tried to kill him by knocking him down with a car. He said attacks on activists had mushroomed in the past six months.
He and his colleagues decided to act after hearing of the alleged assault on Yang Maodong, who has been trying to help residents of Taishi village in Guangdong in southern China. Locals are trying to vote out a mayor accused of embezzling public funds.
Known to many in China by his pen name, Guo Feixiong, Mr Yang was reportedly beaten in front of a police station in the provincial capital, Guangzhou, early on Saturday. Last year he was detained for more than three months for his work in Taishi.
Mr Gao fasted for 48 hours in protest with his friend Ye Shuang. Two other campaigners, Aids activist Hu Jia and democracy campaigner Qi Zhiyong, whose left leg was amputated after he was hit by a soldier's bullet during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, were due to continue the "relay" hunger strike.
Mr Gao said the protest was not aimed at any specific result.
"We want to express our anger and our opposition. We know that we are powerless, but we still hope to make the authorities pay attention to us as people. Our hunger strike will go on until the brutal atrocities against the people and against basic human morality have stopped."
He added that his family was under constant surveillance.
Another lawyer, Tang Jingling, was attacked by thugs in Guangzhou on Wednesday after meeting Mr Yang, according to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group, who said the assaults on appeared to be "a new pattern of using hired men or plainclothes police to silence and intimidate human rights defenders". Mr Gao has urged western governments not to remain silent.
Activists are also concerned about the treatment meted out to blind "barefoot lawyer" Chen Guangcheng, who was put under unofficial house arrest in September and beaten by thugs when he tried to go out, as officials tried to muzzle his campaign against forced abortions and sterilisations.